Data Sheet And References

A group of African American and Dalit scholars are at work on a project on the similarities in the histories and lives of African and Dalit peoples. Scholars such as Ivan van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, V. T. Rajshekar, and others form this submerged network of Afro-Dalit literature[1]

The Afro-Dalit project seeks to posit a common origin for Africans and Dalits as a means to call for political solidarity in the present. It explores the framework of Afro-Dalit scholarship, critiques it, and then offers an alternative approach to the interconnections in African and Indian life. [1]

The Afro-Dalit project purports to paint Dalits as the ‘Blacks’ of India and non-Dalits as India’s ‘whites’.The history of American racism, slavery and Black/White relations is thus superimposed onto Indian society. the Afro-Dalit project attempts to empower Dalits by casting them as victims at the hands of a different race. [2]

The conflation of Aryans and/or Brahmins with the Whites, and of Dravidians with the Blacks, has deepened and merged with the Afro-Dalit movement that conflates Dalits with Africans. The mission of this movement is to bring together Dravidians and Dalits, representing them as the oppressed ‘Blacks’ of India[3]

The idea of a Dravidian substratum for Vedic languages has also become popular among Afro-Dravidianists,who claim a common root for Dravidians and Africans, based on questionable legends and archeology[4]

A example is the Afro-Dalit Project which exploits India’s class inequalities and recasts them in a different light. It is a Western project that promotes the thesis that India’s two hundred million Dalits are racially related to Africans, and that the upper-strata Indians are ‘white’ Aryan immigrants/invaders. Thus, the history of American slavery and exploitation provides the framework in which Dalit youths are to be re-educated as victims of other Indians. There is an impressive level of cooperation between the Western-based intellectual leadership and grassroots Dalit groups in India.[8]

The Dalit youth-leaders created by such programs are turned into trainers of more such youth re-engineering. There are conferences held to instill the notion that they belong to a pan-African solidarity movement. Many such groups then become takeover targets by either Christian evangelists using African-American missionaries to plant the seeds, or by pan-Islamic groups who position Islam as the true religion of Blacks worldwide. Afro-Dalitism is thus, an interim preparation stage to de-couple the target communities from Indian roots and to soften them for further conversion. Thus, what was once a deep, historical African-American connection with core elements of Indian civilization—such as Gandhian non-violent protest and consensus-building adopted by Rev Martin Luther, Jr—has been turned on its head. Indian civilization, rather than being a source of inspiration, is seen as the cause of suffering of Indian groups such as Dalits, who are mythically linked to African-Americans. Such stances are made possible and lent credibility by academic theory-making, a process over which India has exercised little influence.[8]

The Afro-Dalit myth of a shared oppression is based on the view of history that claims a racial clash of civilizations between Aryans and Dravidians, which supposedly occurred thousands of years ago and is shaping community relations in India and Africa today. Ironically, the intellectual support for this thesis comes from the very same academic scholars who condemn Samuel Huntington’s proposition that the modern world is afflicted by various clashes of civilizations, of which the one between Islam and the West is presently on centerstage. They condemn such a thesis, arguing that it triggers tensions and is politically dangerous and socially divisive. Yet the same kind of internal clash in India is actively promoted under the excuse of championing human rights! [8]

Afro-Dalitism is just one of many such projects to alienate India’s subalterns from India. Such movements are based on a wild assortment of identity politics, often backed by their respective foreign nexuses, and the intellectual ammunition is borrowed from the works of specialized scholars [8]

Affro-dalit model of identity creation led to genocide in Rwanda and civil war in Sri Lanka. A recent academic book, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, by Timothy Longman, is based on research into the church-related causes for the genocide in that country.[5]

There is a collaboration of academics and activists that seeks parallels between Dalits in India and Blacks in the United States, and also claims a common racial origin for Dalits and Blacks.[6]

The Dalit activism based on this ideology finds support from Western evangelists, left-liberal NGOs, and government bodies. The proponents of the Afro-Dalit project claim Hinduism to be a racist structure. This is often supported by academic ethnic studies, subaltern studies and theological activism.[6]

Black ideologues started seeking parallels in India. The myth of the White-Aryan-barbaric Brahmin-cunning-invader versus the native-innocent-cultured-Black-Dravidian was given a boost. Drusilla Dunjee Houston (1876–1941), daughter of a Black Baptist minister, was one of the earliest popularizers of this pan-Africanism. She identified the Dravidians as having the ‘familiar traits and customs of Cushite Ethiopians’:[7]

Pan-African mythology claims how the ‘original’ Africans were superior in variousrespects, but were conquered by the trickery of wily Aryan-Brahmins. This myth of subjugation of black-skinned Dravidians by white-skinned Aryan-Brahmins spread over the years, beyond the academy, into American foreign policy[7]

The diary of Nottingham-based Afrikan Caribbean Cultural Education Services insists that the Bible originated in Africa.It also claims that Africans built the Indus Valley Civilization and that Ganges is named after an Ethiopian king who conquered India. Ironically, even though the Hamitic myth has been used to oppress Africans, many Africans appropriate it for their own empowerment[7]

The Afrocentric Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire/ Institut Français d’Afrique Noire(IFAN), founded in colonial French Africa, publishes papers supporting the Afro-Dravidian thesis. These research papers are in turn quoted as evidence by Afrocentric ideologues, such as Clyde Ahmed Winters, in papers with titles such as, ‘The genetic unity of Dravidian and African languages and culture’, ‘Are Dravidians of African Origin?’ etc. During the 1980s, his works found their way into the academic journals of India, receiving high degrees of acceptance in the academic establishment of South India. His work ‘The Harappan Writing of the Copper Tablets’, was published in the Journal of Indian History .’The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians, Manding and Sumerians’, was published in an academic journal, Tamil Civilization. ‘The Indus Valley Writing and Related Scripts of the 3rd Millennium BC’,was published in India Past and Present. ‘The Far Eastern Origin of the Tamils’ was in the Journal of Tamil Studies.Winters weaves a picture of the ancient world in which Dravidians are racially and linguistically identical with various African peoples as well as with ancient Sumerians and Elamites. His theories have been deemed ‘crackpot’ by many academicians, yet they have been influential among Tamilians.[9]

Vijay Prashad, a US-based academic and prominent leftist activist, has endorsed Rajshekar and the Afro-Dalit movement, thereby justifying racism as a way to fight racism. He appears to endorse the Lemurian thesis that ‘India and Africa was one land mass’, which leads him to make the following conclusion: ‘So both the Africans and the Indian Untouchables and tribals had common ancestors’. He also points out that Dalits ‘resemble Africans in physical features’. Prashad is not alone among academicians who have adopted these views.Besides academic and political support from Westerncapitals, this movement also has media support [10]

Western Government-Church Axis influences Afro-Dravidian-Dalit –Christian missionary literature in India is filled with racial hatred based on the Biblical myth of Ham, which serves as the framework for Dravidian race theory. For example, a popular Christian evangelical book endorsed by mainstream church authorities across the denominations, has a complicated version of the Aryan invasion story: Indus Valley Civilization is one of the most ancient, most advanced and amazingly developed urban civilizations of the Dravidians.. . . Between sixth century BC and fourth century AD white skinned foreigners namely Persians (sixth century BC), Greeks (fourth century BC), Kushans (first century AD) and Huns (fourth century AD) invaded India. During this period, white-skinned Romans also came to India for trade. The dark-skinned native Dravidian Indians called these six groups of foreigners together as ‘Aryans’ to mean that they were the invading aliens After explaining how the Aryans took over everything positive in Dravidian life, religion, and culture, including all the major world religions that the Dravidians supposedly had founded, it asserts: the civilization of Dravidians and Sumerians is almost identical. Thus Abraham whose civilization is Dravidian can be called a Dravidian. Jesus Christ, who is a descendant of Abraham, is also thus a Dravidian. In Tamil literature, Noah is called ‘Dravidapathi’. Fr Heras considers Indus Valley Dravidians as the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah [11]

Magazine called Dalit Voice promotes the church’s stand that Dravidians and Dalits are a Black race related to Africans, and it gets support from radical black supremacists. Dalit Voice promotes anti-Semitism and Brahminical-Zionist conspiracy theories for world domination and persecution of Blacks in Africa and India.Dalit Voice claims that theBrahmin race was of Jewish origin.Dalit Voice represents a nexus between Afrocentrists, Indian Dalit activists, Dravidianseparatists, and Christian evangelists. [11]

Dalitology was developed by Jyothi Raj and her husband. It uses the same fabrications as Dravidian race theories, which we examined in Chapters Six and Seven. Dalitology traces the origin of the caste system to ‘Aryan conquerors’ who ‘were divided by differences of blood and racial ancestry from the conquered tribes of India,’ and it expounds an elaborate conspiracy theory along with Afro-Dalit kinship:[12]

The Black people of Africa, the adivasis of Asia and the Dalit people were not organized on caste basis. Why then did the Aryans bring caste system into India? It is because they found that this system was one of the best tools for them to keep the society in eternal division and through that division to perpetuate their hegemony in the larger society.[12]